I remember / je me souviens

I remember / je me souviens

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For those limbic bursts of nostalgia, invented by Proust, miniaturized by Nicholson Baker, and freeze-dried by Joe Brainard in his I remember and by Georges Perec in his Je me souviens.

But there are no fractions, the world is an integer
Like us, and like us it can neither stand wholly apart nor disappear.
When one is young it seems like a very strange and safe place,
But now that I have changed it feels merely odd, cold
And full of interest.
--John Ashbery, "A Wave"

Sometimes I sense that to put real confidence in my memory I have to get to the end of all rememberings. That seems to say that I forego remembering. And now that strikes me as an accurate description of what it is to have confidence in one's memory.
--Stanley Cavell, The Claim of Reason

Monday, September 26, 2005

I remember learning about "hands up." I think I knew it from cartoons, and then my mother or father explained that it was so you couldn't reach for your gun. I thought that was really clever. When we played it -- I think it was Cathy and Nina and I -- we'd reach all the way up, as in the cartoons. But later in movies it turned out that you only made your arms into L-shapes. This seemed more mature, more adult, more knowing, competent -- the cowboys who stood with their upraised arms half-relaxed had expertise which I didn't, and which I was now learning.

posted by william 8:47 AM
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